News of the World is a preposterously, epically bad film. I know, it's just, like, your opinion, man. Well, it is, but let's examine the reasoning behind it.
This is the American West as seen by the narrative gatekeepers: yes, we killed the Indians, but only because they killed us first. Relegating Native Americans to abstract magical apparitions instead of portraying them as human beings reinforces a dangerous mythology.
The film's only dimensional representative of the indigenous people is a white girl. Of German descent. She is the co-star (a very good Helena Zengel). This is 1870 – a time when Kiowa were still trying to resist forcible resettlements that moved them thousands of miles away from their ancestral land. Resisting assimilation into Christianity, resisting being corralled into concentration camps... Don't worry, this is not the news with which Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks, driving in neutral) will spoil your breakfast. He will amuse you with a carefully chosen, vigorously delivered pep talk about coal miners rights. Because, you see, this is a mining town, and people want to hear relevant news. In fact, every episode in News of the World is designed to showcase how reluctantly righteous Kidd is. As a Confederate soldier, we might assume that he fought on the side of slavery. To assuage your fears, we see Hanks pensively reacting to a sight of a lynched African American. The scene is not designed to provoke a thought. It is designed to make you see that Kidd is a forward thinking man.
What nauseates the most in Hanks performance (not for the first time) is his conceited certainty that Kidd holds the high moral ground. There is never any doubt in his acting – it is a an emotional straight line. A lot of people consider Hanks a modern day equivalent of James Stewart or Spencer Tracy. While Hanks' acting ability is clear, the post-Private Ryan Hanks is noting but an institution of decency. Stewart, who was in similar danger in the 40s, hooked up with Anthony Mann and introduced a darker edge to the western. That led him to Hitchcock and a very interesting, slippery terrain of vulnerable manhood. Tracy, perhaps under the weight of his astonishing talent, drank his face into a map of human frailty. In Inherit the Wind and Judgement in Nuremberg, he was younger thank Hanks is now, but looked like his grandfather. One look at Tracy was enough to get the depth of experience. His acting became almost minimal, but his characters had gravity. Hanks is now merely floating.
Cinematically, the film is as flat as its story. Night shots are murky. Daytime offers two modes: crisp sunshine or digital pale blue overcast.
The overall aesthetic is that of a National Geographic special on "how the West was won." Director Paul Greengrass, as evidenced by all of his work, is no visual stylist. He still prefers to shake his camera in close ups, making us believe it is all real because it jitters. Thematically, the director has played with history a few times before with such wanton liberty that News of the World is best to be regarded as a skewed diorama.
An awful, plodding, and shamefully calculated film. One star for Helena Zengel.
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